“Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through…”* Driving past the Bell Auditorium in Augusta, one could almost hear the raspy, vibrant voice of Ray Charles performing Georgia on my mind. In 1960, when the composer, wearing dark glasses and a dazzling smile, resumed this stroll from the 1930s, he returned to his native state for a concert behind the glowing bricks of the building.
But a telegram arriving in his hotel room disrupts his schedule. The message asks him to cancel his concert while the venue practices segregation and has chosen to reserve the best seats for whites. Ray Charles then refused to sing, a decision he paid for with a fine of more than $750. Legend even says – wrongly – that he was banished from Georgia. From, Georgia on my mind became the official anthem of this former segregationist American state, which apologized to the star in 1979. But the anecdote illustrates the wounds that remain open in one of the cradles of the civil rights movement in the United States , in the middle of the presidential campaign.
Between peaches and black Mecca
In the Peach State, where no less than 71 streets in Atlanta are named after this fruit, the scales can tip either Democratic or Republican. In 2020, Joe Biden won this “swing state” with less than 12,000 votes in advance, provoking the ire of his opponent Donald Trump, who cried electoral fraud. Because this disputed state “has only been considered a “swing state” since 2012. When Joe Biden won it in 2020, he was the first Democrat since 1992,” recalls Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, university professor at the Paris-8 University.
Over the years, the composition of the state has changed and today, about a third of the residents are African-American, making Georgia the second state in the country in terms of Afro-descendant population, behind Texas. “As in many segregationist states, there was a large movement of internal migration of African Americans, fleeing persecution to the north at the beginning of the 20th century. At the end of the civil rights movement, many of them decided to return,” explains Cécile Coquet-Mokoko, professor of American civilization at the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin.
Nicknamed “the black Mecca,” the state capital, Atlanta, is representative of this return. In this large city whose typically American contours, between buildings and wide roads, served as a setting for the series The Walking Deadmore than half of the population is African-American. It was also here that Martin Luther King was born.
Ten times more resources for political advertising
The resounding entry into the campaign at the end of July of Kamala Harris, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, could therefore make the difference in Georgia. “It’s very clearly an advantage. For the African American community, there is pride in seeing someone who represents them. », Explains Cécile Coquet-Mokoko, specialist in African American studies. Kamala Harris in any case offered a breather to the blue camp while Joe Biden was, before his withdrawal, 6 points behind Donald Trump in the voting intentions of this state.
By September 30, the game was closer. The real estate mogul was only 0.7 points ahead of his rival according to polls aggregated by the site 538. Donald Trump’s team immediately put its foot down after Kamala Harris entered the race. If the Republican had spent only $3 million on political advertisements in the state while he was in the race with Joe Biden, this amount was multiplied by ten after the arrival of his successor. In early August, in a single day, the candidate spent nearly $24 million on television ads targeting Georgia.
Impeded mobilization
“Georgia is an important issue for Donald Trump,” analyzes Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, who recalls that in 2020, the votes were recounted three times. “There is on one side a strong white evangelical population, very attached to religion, and on the other a large number of black voters with Democratic leanings,” says the researcher. Only 69% of African-Americans said they were “absolutely certain to vote” in September, compared to 74% before the 2020 vote, according to an Ipsos poll for the Washington Post made in April.
The latest information on the 2024 American presidential election
Kamala Harris therefore has an interest in “inciting people to go massively to the polls […] in these states where the Ku Klux Klan [KKK] was very powerful, because black citizens do not register massively on the electoral lists, even today,” explains Claire Bourhis-Mariotti. Worse still, Cécile Coquet-Mokoko is worried about “measures aimed at restricting the right to vote”. In addition to taking place on a Tuesday, forcing Americans to take a day off to exercise their right, “it is not excluded that armed groups like the Proud Boys [une organisation néofasciste d’extrême droite] are present in the polling stations to intimidate voters,” she sighs.
Numerous initiatives, particularly to help with registration on the electoral lists, have flourished, in the hope of pushing these populations towards the polls. A major challenge. Because the mobilization of the African-American community, which nationally represents around 12% of the electorate, could tilt Georgia. And in its wake, the entire country.
* « Georgia, Georgia, all day long »
